A Kansas City nonprofit faces a public hearing next week over a special permit to operate a low-barrier homeless shelter in the Historic Northeast.
Open Doors Foundation began providing services like cold weather shelters in Kansas City’s Historic Northeast in 2025. The organization grew quickly, helping nearly 100 people transition into permanent housing in its first 16 months.
Earlier this year, the group leased a commercial building at 1400 Agnes Ave. with plans to operate the new location as a European-style hostel that would house out-of-town visitors during the World Cup. The organization planned to take the profits generated from The Hostel KC to convert the building into a low-barrier homeless shelter after the tournament ended. They planned the shelter to be equipped to house up to 80 clients and provide services like transitional housing and job placement.
But the hostel never opened. On June 10, a city inspector found there had been a “change in use without permits,” and issued a citation to the property owner.
“Open Doors told me that some of these were inherited," said Kansas City Star development reporter Chris Higgins, who has been reporting on the site. "There were some records showing that this building may have been used as an event space without the right permits, going back to 2024, pre-dating Open Doors' plans. But there was this core issue of converting into a hostel or shelter without getting the right special use permit that they would have needed."
Open Doors is scheduled to go before Kansas City’s Planning Commission on Wednesday, Oct. 21, for a public hearing over a special use permit.
The organization has been facing complaints from nearby residents and businesses over its shelter plans.
“A lot of neighborhood leaders in the Northeast area are concerned about concentrating services in more specific geographic areas and neighborhoods, and the potential burden that that can put on specific neighborhoods when you concentrate services like that,” Higgins said.
“Now you can hear the other side of it as well — that providers are meeting people where they are, they're going where the need is. So there's very much that overarching tension with how we address homelessness in Kansas City and where we place these services,” Higgins said.
In February, Kansas City launched the Housing Gateway Program in an effort to address high rates of chronic homelessness. Modeled off of successful programs in other cities, the Housing Gateway Program aims to house 600 people by the end of its first year.
“Other cities, they really work to connect people with service providers, social workers, caseworkers — these individuals who can really work with people experiencing homelessness to connect them with these services,” Higgins said.
- Chris Higgins, development reporter, Kansas City Star
